The California mom who was abducted, tortured and left to die on the side of a highway likely thought about her family to get her through the savage three-week ordeal, well-known kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart said Friday.
“I found my one thing that I could hold onto no matter what that my captors couldn’t take away or change, was my family. And I imagine the same would be true for Sherri. I would imagine that she held onto them. She survived for them,” Smart told ABC News.
“It’s really important for people to realize that when a victim comes back, whatever they did, they did to survive,” Smart added.
In 2002, at the age of 14, the child protection advocate was snatched from her bed inside her family’s Salt Lake City home by weirdo street preacher Brian David Mitchell.
Smart, now 29, endured nine months of sexual torture at the hands of Mitchell, who raped her about four times a day.
She was finally rescued by police officers, who recognized her face from a segment that aired on “America’s Most Wanted.”
Legendary child victims’ advocate John Walsh, the ex-host of “America’s Most Wanted,” says it will be a slow road back to normalcy for Sherri Papini.
“It’s a desensitizing, mind-breaking experience. People have to be patient. Be patient with these victims because they’ve been through hell,” Walsh told ABC.
But Smart says Papini will never be the same.
“I would suggest to Sherri to focus on herself, focus on her family, focus on healing,” she said. “You never go back to normal. You have to find a new normal.”